newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

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nismoguy82

newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by nismoguy82 »

Hi all, Ive been tinkering with Linuxmint 13/14 on my OLD PC, trying to see if I can make decent use out of it before scrapping it. Here's the setup:

-AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2Ghz
-1.5 Gb ram
-GeForce FX5200 256Mb

I was hoping to be able to use it for HD Youtube and other video sites such as Viki.com, with some occassional use of the built in mediaplayers ala VLC etc. Nothing more. I installed the Geforce card but my CPU still gets to 100% with screen tearing and A/V lag when I try to play Youtube videos at 720p. I've tried the Zram?...and swappiness tricks with no noticeable changes. I installed the Nvidia drivers for the card, but maybe I need to "gut" the system some? Any help/advice would be appreciated. If all else fails, I'll junk it and grab an Android TV box/stick instead.

TIA
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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bigj231

Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by bigj231 »

Can you post the output of:

Code: Select all

inxi -GDISC
You might need to try another lighter distro or DE. I would try XFCE before I installed another distribution.

If all else fails, you could use it as a file/media server.
nismoguy82

Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by nismoguy82 »

System: Host: ------------------ Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic i686 (32 bit)
Desktop: N/A Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
CPU: Single core AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (-UP-) cache: 512 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3) clocked at 1000.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] X.Org: 1.13.0 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1280x1024@50.0hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce FX 5200/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW! GLX Version: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 173.14.36
Drives: HDD Total Size: 80.0GB (5.4% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: ST380011A size: 80.0GB
Info: Processes: 125 Uptime: 18 min Memory: 280.2/1508.9MB Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4
renatov

Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by renatov »

Flash playback is problematic in Linux and there is not much you can do about it, as long as I know. Only in Windows your GPU acceleration can be fully used to play flash videos.
nismoguy82

Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by nismoguy82 »

Guess I'll try going with XFCE first before going back to windows. I was hoping to stick to linux.
bigj231

Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by bigj231 »

Did you try the adobe flash plugin instead of the mint one? It's in the repositories.

Also, unless your CPU is really being strained, your system should be able to play back video just fine. Check your CPU usage while you are trying to play videos. If it's at or near 100%, then your computer can't handle it.
But really do try the adobe plugin first. It should help quite a bit.
Barfication

Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by Barfication »

Hi,

It is already April, but you might still be interested. Some great tips have already been mentioned, but I might add one more.

I am running a Athlon 64 3200+ myself, with 1.5 Gb of ram. I guess it originally had a GeForce FX5200 128 Mb, not 100% sure about that, but I swapped that one for an AMD/ATI HD4650 1GB a long time ago.

I am able to run 720p YouTube clips smoothly.

I can even run 1080p YouTube clips smoothly, but they have to be fully downloaded before playback.

As far as I know Adobe stopped making new versions of Flash for Linux in February 2012. So basically you will get the latest version Adobe provided (11.2), which wasn't great. Please note: Adobe still provides security updates.

Luckily the Flash player that is integrated in the Chrome browser will still be at the latest version and that is currently version 11.6. (Please note: not for the Chromium browser, only Chrome.)

I get the best flash performance with Chrome these days. So you'll might give it a try.

Too bad it limits your choice, but well..

When I upgraded my video-card the video performance went up by a large step, but at this stage I would not recommend buying a new video-card because it would not be wise investing in a PC that old.

Oh, and make sure you run the 64-bit version of Mint (or other distro of choice) to get the most out of your hardware.
renatov

Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by renatov »

And what about mint version of flashplugin? Is it the latest version as well?
revelationman
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Re: newbie..Athlon 64 3200 + Geforce FX5200

Post by revelationman »

I find this interesting I have practically the same pc

System: Host: Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
CPU: Single core AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (-UP-) cache: 512 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3) clocked at 1000.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA NV44 [GeForce 6200 TurboCache]
X.Org: 1.13.0 drivers: (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) FAILED: nouveau Resolution: 1280x960@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NV44 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 9.0.3
Drives: HDD Total Size: 434.2GB (32.2% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: Maxtor_6L080M0 size: 82.0GB
2: USB id: /dev/sdb model: DataTraveler_2.0 size: 32.1GB 3: USB id: /dev/sdc model: 5AS size: 320.1GB
Info: Processes: 137 Uptime: 12:29 Memory: 794.0/995.2MB Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4

I am installing another gig of ram, the video is not too bad , I checked I am running at 65 % but mostly around 50% the video is not bad, not great, maybe an upgrade to a better card,

I do see a failed around the video drivers,
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